Wangechi Mutu’s new exhibition at Galleria Borghese unfolds like a poem in the Baroque trove of archetypal truths that define this historical gem in Rome. With “Black Soil Poems,” the Kenya-American artist subtly introduces an alternative narrative between the museum’s opulent, masterpiece-filled walls and its verdant garden, delicately interweaving the stories and ancestral threads of her African heritage and Yoruba spirituality with the classical myths and symbols already embedded in this majestic palace. As her works make subtle, evocative or at times ominous appearances within the space, they forge a dialogue that is at once tender and disruptive, unsettling and revealing, reactivating what museum director Francesca Cappelletti describes as an “archive of myths,” as new meanings emerge from this dialogue between past, presence and future.
The show starts at the palace’s facade, where the artist presents the same sculptures she originally created for the Met’s now annual facade commission. Here, her reimagined dark Cariatides act as guardians, appearing as both authoritarian figures and welcoming maternal presences, channeling something deeper tied to a primordial bond with both flesh and the earthy reality of the world, and some ancestral connection with more cosmological systems. Part of the artist’s ongoing exploration of alternative forms of power, monumentality and gender representation, they not only bear the weight of their authoritarian position, but embody it in their calm and stoic posture, suggesting the possibilities of transcending the conflictual nature of times and events.
The initial artistic intervention foreshadows the unfolding spatial dynamics within the gallery, where the visitors’ gaze is invited to engage in an ongoing exchange between upper and lower levels. The result is “one of the most successful insertions of contemporary works,” Cappelletti told Observer during the June 9 preview. Mutu successfully avoids superimposing her work on the collection, instead creating a subtle dialogue that allows visitors to interpret the museum’s remarkable works in new ways while considering that there are archetypal myths in all cultures.
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Instead of navigating solely from a human-centered perspective, Mutu invites visitors to fill and inhabit a liminal space, offering a different experience of the Galleria Borghese that suggests new readings of both the collection and building. Embracing this open and dynamic relationship with both space and materiality, Mutu challenges notions of linear or consequential time and events, as well as fixed meaning. Her work engages almost alchemically with new materials and processes, while weaving archetypal truths of the poetic and mythological realms within the context of the present-day social and material landscape, creating a rich tapestry of meaning and experience.
Poetry and mythology are at the very heart of the exhibition, as the artist references and revives ancient ancestral traditions that evoke a more visceral connection between the body, the spirit and the soil. Conceiving the museum not as a static archive but as a shifting field, Mutu positioned works to function as thresholds between times and spaces. These ghostly presences expand our understanding of art history, creating unexpected dialogues across traditions and ancestral symbologies developed simultaneously across cultures. The entire show is grounded in this search for common roots, blending all cultures and finding a transcultural dimension in the universal language of archetypes.
At the entrance, visitors are welcomed by Nedge (the Swahili word for birds) floating in the portico and confronting the majesty of the museum’s marble sculptures. Made from delicate and perishable organic materials such as branches, paper pulp and horn, they suggest the fleeting nature of status, redefining sculpture not as a fixed form but as a living possibility within this in-between space.
It is impossible not to be awed by the grandeur of the 18th-century ceiling frescoes by Giuseppe Cades—majestic, theatrical scenes drawn from classical mythology. Yet Mutu compels us to lower our gaze, redirecting our attention to the intricately articulated Roman mosaics beneath our feet, inviting us to contemplate the layered histories of war and violence they encode. As one of the few interventions specifically conceived to engage with the site’s heritage, The Grains of Words is a sculptural form of concrete poetry fashioned from soil, coffee and tea. Words are pressed into the earth, evoking a deep, ancestral connection to the land as a vessel of meaning, a place to root and anchor identity. Drawing on lyrics from Bob Marley’s War—itself a reworking of Haile Selassie’s speech to the United Nations demanding racial justice—this poetic gesture, infused with memory, releases a distinct, visceral scent that fills the room. The aroma adds both sensorial and symbolic depth, amplifying the work’s meditation on the enduring presence of human oppression and the spectacle of violence and self-interest that stains collective existence.
Land actually plays a crucial role in this exhibition, particularly the concept of “Black soil”—a notion that connects directly to African culture and the continent but resonates across diverse geographies, including the hidden gardens of Galleria Borghese, where, after the rain, new life can once again take root and flourish.
Rituals of profound reconnection with the animal and natural world and its cyclical rhythms are evoked in Subterranean Falling Flames, one of Mutu’s stunning collage works on paper. The piece confronts the young Gianlorenzo Bernini’s famous David, with its heroic stance and idealized muscular form, embodying raw physical power capable of overturning the seemingly invincible. Mutu, however, contrasts this with a feminine body already deeply intertwined with the cycles of nature—a body depicted as both carrier and vehicle, intimately connected to the surrounding ecosystem as a bird descends into it, becoming one as a spirit or transmission of consciousness. Standing beneath a sky of flames, this hybrid humanoid figure suggests a transcendence beyond its physical limitations. As the body seeks to reconnect with and reappropriate the “holy spirit” that envelops it, Mutu mediates the alienating Cartesian dualism that has historically separated body and spirit: here the metamorphosis is imagined not as an escape from material existence, but as an evolution where spirit and matter, senses and mind, are not opposites but elements of an entangled system. Through an endless exchange, a continuous flux of forces and energetic movement, spirit and matter, human and animal, body and landscape activate each other, revealing a sacred geography where suffering and illumination are inseparable.
In Poems by My Great Grandmother I, Mutu transforms an everyday object into a resonant vessel of memory and intergenerational knowledge. The sufuria, an aluminum cooking pot now widespread across East Africa but originating from India through trade and exchanges, immediately speaks to cultural exchange and displacement. Suspended above it, as both totem and fetish, hangs a sculptural representation of a carcass or fossil crafted from red soil. Reestablishing the vital dialogue between the spiritual, the magical and everyday life that characterized ancient civilizations, this installation functions as an organic carrier of memory and ancestral connection, much like other everyday objects that preserve the intangible heritage of shared traditions. In an act of remembrance and resilience, ancestral poems and wisdom linger, suspended in this floating presence, awaiting collection and protection within this hybrid, communal vessel, evoking the idea that oral narratives resonate across generations, persisting despite historical shifts and displacement, while also incorporating new elements through exchange and hybridization. In an alcove space between classical sculptures, the artist’s hand leaves a trace that is both visual and sonic: the tool’s movement creates a faint vibration, a sound that lingers inside the vessel, while potentially expanding and evolving in new directions.
Fueled by her interest in anthropology, paleontology and the history of African art—along with the deep animist beliefs that inspire it—Mutu’s sculptures often merge organic and artificial materials creating unique and captivating entities that inhabit the mysterious yet ominous space between the monstrous and the ancestral, evoking both primal power, ancient wisdom and future evolutions. At Galleria Borghese, we see how Mutu delves deeply into the circles of evolution to explore hybrid structures between humans and fossils.
Living and working half-time in Nairobi, Mutu remains deeply connected to nature and the jungle, returning to a primordial bond with the earth. Two bronze heads, their hairstyle recalling the intricate East African braiding practices, emerge as a fertile symbol of sisterhood and care, urging us to reconsider not only the relationships between cultures but also between species with a more feminine generative approach to the world. Imbued with a magical, divinatory quality, this work shows how Mutu’s works envision alternative paradigms of knowledge, offering new ways to understand our relationship with the world, not only drawing inspiration from counter-narratives that lie far outside the Western canon but also trying to trace common themes, symbols and truths that are recurrent across cultures.
Floating above the sculptural presences, the installation Prayers takes shape as a long chain of beads, invoking an ancestral technique found across cultures. In this context, the material and corporeal thread subtly disrupts and reframes Bernini’s Ratto di Proserpina, unraveling potential links between mythological motifs and archetypal truths across cultures while also giving prominence to feminine energies over the dominant machismo and masculine violation of her will and force. Suspended roots form a fertile system not designed to pierce power that forces a descent into the underworld, but to access buried yet interconnected knowledge that elevates.
While Prayers gestures upward, the bronzes pull the focus downward to the body, to the ground, to a different kind of presence. Together, they suggest that meaning resides not in hierarchy, but in the resonance with the perpetual circle of nature. A suspended equilibrium emerges—between earthly and celestial dimensions, origin and reimagination—unveiling this room as a site where histories, cultures and materials reflect and expand one another through a new cosmology rooted in the earth, ancestral practices and interspecies kinship.
An extensive modular installation takes over the Pinacoteca, occupying the entirety of the Salone Lanfranco. Suspended Playtime activates the room through a playful constellation of makeshift balls, inviting a return to the artist’s childhood. The sculptures evoke the resourcefulness of Nairobi’s children, who fashion soccer balls from waste in Mutu’s native Kenya and beyond, with a creative DIY born out of necessity. Floating just above the ground, the work suggests motion, informality and improvisation, potentially creating an organic rhythm and subtle vibrations. They remain silently suspended in the heavily ornamented space, poised to dramatically disrupt its classical serenity, introducing new energetic fluxes.
In the Aurora Room, which is dedicated to the passage of time and natural cycles, masks and ornaments stage rituals of reverence for embodied energy with First Weeping and Second Weeping heads. As hybrid beings, they subvert and expose the boundaries between the inside and outside of the body, where feelings and sensations are internalized and viscerally conveyed through form. In dramatic contrast to the idealization of the human body and psyche in classical art, these sculptures function as counter-portraits, expressing both the vulnerability of the body and the potential for transcendence and transformation, challenging and subverting the static, idealized representations of power and status in the surrounding old paintings. In Mutu’s work, the body becomes porous: made from reused organic and inorganic materials, it becomes a threshold between states, fluctuating between generation and decay—permeable entities in the process of becoming.
Continuing this exercise in the exteriorization of visceral sensations, Bloody Rug becomes a silent physical record of violence—an interiorized trauma passed down through generations. The stains of past wounds are not easily reconciled, remaining embedded in the very fabric of identity, both individual and communal. Installed in the same room as Domenichino’s The Hunting of Diana, this work establishes a counter-narrative, confronting the tradition of gendered spectacle. While in the painting, the women are watched by hidden men as an allegory of intrusion, the deep red carpet is marked and stained, refusing to conceal the trauma of gender and racial violence, instead absorbing and exposing its traces. Contained within the rectangular space of this domestic textile, it attempts a silent record of violence—one that already extends beyond the confines of the piece itself.
Made of red soil, seeds and feathers, Throned is a mysteriously solitary hybrid entity, either generating new life or devouring the soul, that dominates the exhibition’s final room. As one of the last interventions encountered in the Pinacoteca, it appears either reclining or surrendering, yet still maintains the authority of its resilient presence. Intriguingly, it enters into dialogue with Titian’s Venus Blindfolding Cupid and Amor Sacro e Amor Profano, addressing the transience of existence and all earthly passions, our inevitable return to the earth and the potential transformation of the body into other beings. Crafted from the very fabric of the land—rich, red soil—interwoven with seeds, paper pulp, natural pigments and with feathers, the enigmatic piece presents a hybrid figure of haunting solitude. Its form, ambiguously poised, suggests both creation and destruction, dominance and submission, evoking dignity through posture and rooting rather than adornment. Is it summoning new life into existence, nurturing a nascent spirit? Or, with equal gravity, is it consuming a soul, absorbing its essence back into the primal elements from which it was formed? This inherent duality imbues Throned with potent mystery and embodied feminine power, suggesting a generative energy rather than a disruptive one, rooted in shared memory rather than in monuments.
Outside in the Cardinal’s garden, four bronzes contemplate the intertwining of cultures, suggesting evolving, fluid identities informed by African traditions, evoking aquatic deities, ancestral beings and regenerative forces. Water Mama, a Black mermaid, sits outside, embodying fluid identities as narratives and archetypal figures are shared across cultures. Three baskets, Musa, are hybrid creatures in transformation: floating in water inside baskets, they appear suspended in either gestation or inertia, awaiting their next phase of transformation or rebirth. Notably, all the bronzes are realized with a twisted approach to material, further confusing and problematizing the physical malleability of their final appearance, thus reinforcing the fluidity of all beings. Inhabiting this revelatory space where biology encounters and blends with mythology to reveal universal structures, the four dark-patinated bronzes enter into dynamic relation with the natural surroundings of Galleria Borghese’s garden, embracing the possibility of being shaped, reformed and held by forces greater than themselves.
Ultimately, Wangechi Mutu is exploring the question of what endures and fades, finding, reviving and refueling an archetypal and mythological poetic language capable of transcending time, space and cultural barriers to speak to humanity, connecting it across geographies as a universal lexicon. Poems and symbols, myths and rituals are embraced here as the result of a universal human need for symbolic vehicles that allow our conscious minds to engage with and connect to the essential, timeless truths of our existence as a small part of a broader cosmic system.
Wangechi Mutu’s “Black Soil Poems” is on view at Galleria Borghese through September 14, 2025.
